Last Place You'd Expect To Find Something Meaningful

Yes, reading Tucker Max this morning before going to visit my grandparents (wow, that felt kinda awful just to write), but I stunned myself when I found two actual honest-to-God quasi serious comments from the third leg of his book tour this winter.

As it's an incredibly long post, so I'll cut 'n paste the pertinent parts here:

I forgot about this at first, but I want to address it:

Last night these three girls from Skidmore came out to the signing. They were 18 year old freshman, nice girls, and they had one main question for me. I'm paraphrasing:

"How is it you can get away with having so much sex and just doing what you want? I want to fuck a lot too, but I don't know, I just can't seem to do it, my friends all tell me that its wrong and that I'd be a slut, plus there is such a double standard about it. If you do it, you're a hero, if I do it, I'm a whore. It's not fair."

I want to talk about this, because I think that people sometimes misunderstand my position on the issue. This is basically what I told her:

Whether you are a man or a woman, there is nothing at all wrong with wanting to have a lot of sex. I want to especially emphasize this: If you are a woman, having a lot of sex does NOT automatically make you a whore. As long as you are honest with the other person about what you want, you are safe (this means condoms for guys) and responsible (and birth control for girls), and you do it for the right reasons, sex is a very good thing and you should not be ashamed of it at all.

The only way you will be truly happy is to figure out what your desires are, and then act on them in a safe, responsible manner. If you want to have sex, then go out and have sex. If you don't, that's OK too, both positions are right in their own way. The last thing I am advocating is a specific course of action; what I am saying is that you need to figure out what is right for you, and do that. It is your life, not anyone elses, who the fuck are they to tell you what you should and should not do? As a general rule, if you enjoy something and it's not hurting anyone else, then you have every right to keep doing it, and fuck anyone who disagrees.

Now, if you are female and take a liberated approach to sex, there is no question that some of your friends will not like it and they will castigate you for it. FUCK'EM. Get new friends. No real friend would ever get down on you for doing something that makes you happy. Chances are, if you are having a lot of sex (and are being responsible about it) and they have an issue with it, it's not you they are criticizing, it is themselves, they are just taking it out on you.

As you get older you'll see this more and more: whenever you pursue your dreams and goals, even something small like personal pleasure, some people will shit on you for it. 95% of the time, this will be because they are jealous that they aren't doing it themselves. Watching you be happy doing what pleases you only makes them realize that they aren't doing the same thing, but instead of turning that anger inwards and changing what sucks about their life, they will turn it outwards and react against you. People like that suck, cut them out of your life. You should always strive to surround yourself with people who root for you, not against you, people who enhance your life and who bring something to the table, not people who take from it (and of course, you should strive to be one of those people also).

Granted, if you are young you are going to think something is good for you when it probably isn't, and as a result you are going to make mistakes. That's OK, that is part of the nature of youth. Sometimes the only way to find the right path is to walk down the wrong one for awhile. Shit, the only reason I do anything right this point in my life is because I probably was doing it wrong, realized I was fucking up, and fixed it. The only way you can ever really understand who you are as a person and what it is that really makes you happy is by trying lots of different things and seeing where you fall. Life is not about doing what everyone else does; it's about finding out who you are and being that person.

I also want to point one thing out: I said in the first paragraph that you should make sure you are doing things for the right reasons. As an 18 year old girl or a 40 year old man or anything in between, if you feel like you want to have lots of sex with lots of partners, then be safe and responsible and honest, and try it out. Maybe it works, maybe not, but you can't know until you try.

BUT, you should ask yourself, "Why am I fucking all these people?" If it's because you just really enjoy experiencing other people and you like the act of sex and aren't ready for a committed relationship, then those are the right reasons and you shouldn't regret what you are doing. But if you are fucking people to cover up some emotional scar, or if you are doing it for validation or for similar wrong reasons, then it's not going to work and it's not a good thing. I keep telling you to be honest with other people, and that is important, but more important is to be honest with yourself. Many people use sex and drugs and alcohol as proxies to cover pain; that doesn't work. Facing that pain is the only way to actually deal with it. Covering it won't make it go away; like my buddy SlingBlade says, "FELLATIO WON'T FILL THE HOLE IN YOUR SOUL!"

And on that note, I am going out to get drunk and have sex with a random girl...fuck you, I can be a (semi-)contradiction if I want to be. The only way you can break the rules is if you know them first.

And the other item, oddly, is (if you read the backstory from the link above, this becomes slightly less ...um...? whatever...):

We fuck again, and to be honest, the second time was pretty fucking amazing. ... But for whatever reason it kinda turned into really passionate and hot sex and, well, I don't want to call it meaningful because I barely know this girl, but it was one of the closest things I've had to emotionally touching sex since I was dating Bunny. [my link, not his.. he has a link to her in his sidebar]

If you know anything about sex you know that while physical chemisty is important to sex, what really makes good sex great is an emotional connection. I can't explain what happened or why, and I am not going to spend another second thinking about it. I really do not want to consider what the implications are of me forming a quick and premature emotional attachment to a girl who wants me to [nevermind... read his post... I'm not putting that here...].

Seriously... if you haven't checked Tucker Max out, do so. He is absolutely hilarious. His stories are way funnier and crazier than anything (okay... almost anything) me or any of my friends have ever done... Seriously. It's like Tucker and his Duke Law friends are like the guys from the Pound.... only, like... evil.

Well, more overtly evil, at least.